“Shrewd guess of Big John’s that was, Dad,” he replied. “It cut off at least half a mile for them. If the cat had gone north, along under the first rim wall, they’d have been out of it instead of us. Let’s ride back into the gulches and box canyons of the country behind the rim, and see what we can see.”
They looked up, seeking a place to climb back. A thousand feet above them towered the rim of rock, dented with columnar pinnacles, crowned with dwarfed pines that they knew were themselves at least a hundred feet high. The Colonel was winded and panting before they had climbed for fifteen minutes. The crumbly soil slid down underfoot; even zigzagging was slow and laborious toil,—not at all eased by ledge after ledge of rock outcroppings that called for hands, knees and feet to scramble up them. Niltci and Sid pulled and pushed the Colonel up, but an hour of dizzy, sweating work had gone by and all were spitting cotton before they stood at the base of the rim rock precipice.
Five hundred feet sheer it rose above them. For comparison Sid imagined that if he were looking up the Woolworth building to its very top and if, at the same time, he were standing on a narrow shelf of yellow and rotten rock with a slope three times as deep below, ending in blue nothingness—he would have some of the sensations that now overcame him as he looked up for some possible chimney up which to climb and wondered how they were ever going to get his father up it if they did find one. If he could only manage to stand off from this thing a little, so as to get some idea of its surface, it would be easy to find the break in the rim where they had come down. Which way did it lie, north or south? They discussed it, finally yielding to Niltci, who was sure that it lay north.
Along under the rim wall they crept. The narrow path was worn deep with cougar tracks. It was a regular runway for them, for they lived down here in the canyon and came over the rim at night to hunt in the deer and wild horse country of the hinterland. At any point they might come upon a cougar cave, here, and the Colonel, who was in advance, never passed around a pinnacle base without stepping warily, with his rifle poised for instant use.
“By George, Niltci, you’re wrong—we should have turned south!” barked out Sid after perhaps half an hour of this gingerly progress. “Look at these young Matterhorns coming up out of the canyon below us! I never noticed them before!”
The party stopped to take bearings. Certainly the lookout was new and unfamiliar. The canyon jutted out here in a great cape, and on its slope Nature had dropped, casually, three or four red and yellow mountains that rose below like pyramids. Anywhere else they would be objects of wonder and bear grandiloquent names.
But Niltci shook his head vigorously and led on without a word. The rim cliff ended abruptly a little further on in a huge tower of stone, and, rounding it, they found themselves in a vast amphitheater, a mile deep, and a mile across a valley of illimitable depths to its opposite point. All around it the cliffs rose sheer. Surely they never came down here! Niltci had to acknowledge that much, himself, but instead of turning back to retrace their steps he grunted impetuously and led them on, following the rim into that enormous basin.
“Aw, rats!—what’s the use, Niltci, you’re crazy!” exploded Sid, as both he and the Colonel balked at going any further. For answer the Indian boy pointed to a thin fissure that cleft the rim from top nearly to bottom, up near the head of the basin. It was about half a mile away. How Niltci could know that that crevice could be practicable for ascent, Sid could not conjecture, but the red men were wise in the ways of Nature, so he followed on, albeit incredulously. But he had no idea what impassable obstacle might await them to the south if they turned back. This, at least, looked possible!
Arrived at it, they peered up to where the last of it ended in a broken, jagged path, showing where water had come down during the rains. For fifty feet this rose up the cliff,—an absurd trail for anything but a fly to attempt; then began the in-cutting of the fissure.
Niltci started up it, amid a howl of protest from Sid and the Colonel. Like a creeping cat the Indian lad climbed steadily up until he had reached the fissure, where he turned with a whoop of triumph.